Next steps for understanding the selective relevance of female-female competition

Description

After decades of neglect, recent empirical
research on exaggerated female traits
(e.g., ornaments, armaments, aggression,
acoustic signals, etc.) has revived interest
in this widespread but poorly understood
phenomenon, and shown that these traits
often function in the context of female-female
competition (West-Eberhard,
1983; Amundsen, 2000; Clutton-Brock,
2009; Rosvall, 2011a; Stockley and Bro-Jørgensen,
2011; Rubenstein, 2012 [Theme
issue]; Stockley and Campbell, 2013
[Theme...[Show more] issue]). However, recent reviews
have emphasized the applicability of sexual
vs. social selection, rather than rigorously
examining the role of different ecological
contexts in shaping the evolution of traits
used in competitive contexts (hereafter,
“competitive traits”) in females. Thus,
we still lack a solid understanding of
the ecological and evolutionary mechanisms
driving the evolution of female trait
expression, in particular whether, how,
and why these mechanisms vary among
species, and between the sexes.